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by Ellie603
Summary: When Chandler has to spend Christmas in Tulsa, a comment from a coworker trying to get him to cheat on Monica makes him rethink his career and what he's doing spending Christmas so far away from the woman he loves. A missing moment from "TOW Christmas in Tulsa"


_A/N: This is my first fic with actually married Mondler (except for the last little bit of At the End of the Aisle, which I don't really think counts), so this was super fun. A lot of this fic is actual stuff from the episode, just with Chandler's thoughts thrown in, but i felt like it was kind of necessary for the couple extra moments in the middle and at the end that are the reason I wrote this fic. I hope you guys like it!_

_I'm still definitely looking for more missing moment suggestions if anyone has a Mondler moment they want a fic for. Thanks so much to all of you guys that have given me ideas already!_

_Disclaimer: I do not own _Friends_, but some dialogue is taken from "TOW Christmas in Tulsa."_

* * *

Chandler stood in the near empty conference room in Tulsa on Christmas Eve. His coworker Wendy was the only one with him since he had sent the rest of their team home to be with their families for the evening. Chandler was glad for the company, but, really, anyone he wanted to spend Christmas with was miles away from Oklahoma back in New York.

The phone rang, and Chandler picked it up.

"Chandler Bing."

"Hi, honey!" he heard the voice of his wife from the far away city. "We're all here. We just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas!" Chandler heard chorused on the line, mixed with some nonsense sounds that he assumed were coming from Phoebe.

"Aww, Merry Christmas!" Chandler replied, happy that Monica and his friends had thought to call him. "I miss you guys." He flipped through some papers on the conference room table thoughtlessly.

"So is it horrible?" Monica's voice asked. "Is everybody working really hard?"

"Ah, well, no, it's just me and Wendy," he answered, gesturing to his coworker even though Monica couldn't see him.

There was a pause. "Wendy?" Monica said in a much less cheerful tone than before. "That sounds like a girl's name."

"It is," Chandler answered, slightly confused. "Did I not tell you about her?"

"Mhmm, mhmm, about the time you told me about New Year's Eve," Monica answered, referencing their conversation before Chandler left when he found out that he hadn't told her that he was working on New Year's Eve. "Where's everybody else?"

"I sent them home," Chandler responded, sighing slightly, wishing that he could have sent himself home as well.

"Aww, you are such a good boss!" Monica said sweetly, before returning to the previous topic. "Is she pretty?"

Chandler smiled for a second before realizing that Monica wanted an actually answer. "Uh, uh…"

He heard Ross's voice quietly through the phone. "Answer faster, answer faster."

"I don't know," he said finally.

"Answer better, answer better," came Ross's voice again.

Chandler looked at Wendy from the corner of his eye, trying to come up with something. "I don't think of her that way, you know. Uh, she's a, she's a colleague."

"What does she do there?" Monica asked.

"Oh, she's Regional Vice President, she's just below me," he answered, wanting to move away from such an unimportant topic and let Monica know how much he wished he could be back home with her.

"She did WHAT?" Monica yelled, sounding outraged.

Chandler sighed exasperatedly. "BE-LOW me," he enunciated to clear up the confusion.

"Oh!" he heard Joey's voice. "Is Wendy the runner-up Miss Oklahoma?"

"WHAT?" he heard Monica again.

This was not how Chandler had wanted this conversation to go. "Well, she didn't win," he said, trying to salvage things.

"Well maybe I should let you and the second prettiest girl in Oklahoma get back to work," Monica said. Chandler could tell she was upset.

"Well, second prettiest that year. I mean, of all the girls in Oklahoma, she's probably–"

"Oh, Chandler, stop talking!" Rachel's voice cut him off.

"Honey, there's really nothing to worry about," Chandler said honestly. _As though Wendy could hold a candle to Monica,_ he thought to himself.

"Okay," she replied, but Chandler could tell she wasn't really okay.

"I'm serious," he said insistently.

"Okay!" she said again, sounding only slightly more convincing.

"Merry Christmas," he said finally, not feeling very merry at all.

"Merry Christmas," she responded, still sounding upset.

"Merry Christmas, you guys," he said to Joey, Phoebe, Rachel, and Ross.

"Merry Christmas," they replied with much less enthusiasm than before, though still with Phoebe's non-word noises instead of an actual "Merry Christmas" from her.

Chandler hung up the phone and turned to Wendy, missing Monica more than ever. "The wife says hi," he said tapping the phone several times for emphasis.

"Ah!" Wendy replied, coming over to him. "Fun conversation?" she asked in a way that implied that she already knew, or at least assumed, that the conversation hadn't been fun.

"Ah, well, she's just got this weird idea that, uh, you know, just because you and I are alone that something's gonna happen," he said, downcast, wishing that a silly and unnecessary argument wasn't how he had left things with his wife.

"Huh?" Wendy replied. "Really?"

Chandler scratched the back of his head, smiling slightly at the absurdity of Monica's fear.

Wendy moved closer to him and started playing with his tie. "Would that be so terrible?"

Chandler's mouth fell open. Wendy _wanted_ something to happen. Monica had been right!

"This is probably the wrong thing to be worrying about," he said as Wendy continued to stroke his tie. "But you're getting ham on my only tie."

Wendy moved her head closer towards his.

"Whooaa, back off, missy!" he said, taking a step away from Wendy, who still held on to his tie.

She laughed. "Missy?"

"I don't know!" he said, flustered. "I'm not used to girls making passes at me! Wait a minute," he thought quickly, "am I sexy in Oklahoma?"

"You are to me," Wendy answered, moving toward him again.

"No," Chandler said bashfully. "No." Suddenly he realized that Wendy had moved her hands to either side of his torso. "No!" he exclaimed, moving away from her again.

"I'm, I'm married," he said decisively.

"So?" Wendy replied. "I'm married." She held up the rings on her left hand for emphasis.

"I'm _happily_ married," he emphasized.

"Oh, what's that like?" Wendy asked sarcastically.

"Right, so, I'm sorry," he finished, trying to move past what had just happened.

"Seriously?" she asked, clearly not done with him. "Happily married?" She gestured to the phone on the table. "So that phone call before, that was happy?"

"Well, look, it's not easy to spend this much time apart," he said partly to Wendy, but mostly to himself. He just wanted to be back home with Monica. "You know, she's entitled to be a little paranoid, or, in this case, right on the money." He walked away from Wendy a third time, his thoughts now completely on his wife back in New York. "You know, she's amazing, and beautiful," he turned back to Wendy, "and smart, and, if she were here right now, she'd kick your ass."

Wendy laughed slightly, and looked down at her feet, dispirited.

"Look," Chandler said, having no real negative feelings toward Wendy, despite what had just happened, "you're a really nice person, ham stealing and adultery aside. But what I have with my wife is pretty great, so nothing's ever going to happen between us."

"Okay, let me ask you something," Wendy said, evidently taking one last shot. "If what you and your wife have is so great, then why are you spending Christmas with me?"

Chandler looked at Wendy for a moment, considering. He knew that the subtext that Wendy was trying to convey – that the reason he was spending Christmas in Tulsa was because he had feelings for her and didn't care about his wife– wasn't true in the slightest, but Wendy's question did bring up a good point. If he loved Monica as much as he did, then why was he letting something as stupid as a job get in the way of him spending Christmas with her? This wasn't like Monica not coming with him to Tulsa so she could work at Javu. She _loved_ her job; he didn't even _like_ his.

But he did love Monica. He thought back to the night in London when Monica had kissed him and they had slept together for the first time. What should have felt completely weird had ended up feeling like the most natural thing in the world. He remembered wondering time and time again that night and in the months that followed why they had never realized that they should be together before. After it had happened, it just felt like it made perfect sense.

Then, he recalled he and Monica's conversation at the hospital after Phoebe gave birth to the triplets when they made it clear to one another that what they were doing was more than just "goofing around." That had been the first real step for them.

He thought about their trip to Vegas, which had started out horribly with their argument over Monica's stupid mustachioed ex-boyfriend Richard, but which had ended with them deciding they wanted to get married. He remembered their excited visit to the casino gift shop where they stole a sweatshirt to be Monica's something new, borrowed, and blue, Monica shoving it under her dress, pretending she was pregnant, and then momentarily getting caught up in the fantasy. Chandler smiled to himself as he realized that probably sometime soon, Monica really would be pregnant with a baby, and not just a stolen sweatshirt pretend one.

Finally, his thoughts turned to a conversation they had had right after he and Monica had gotten engaged when they were considering whether or not to have a big wedding. He remembered telling Monica about his plans for the future, about the house he wanted, and the kids, and the cat. And he remembered Monica saying to him in response that she didn't want a big, fancy wedding; she wanted a marriage.

_And so do I,_ Chandler thought to himself. He shook his head, looking down at Wendy. "You're right," he said.

Wendy looked back at him, hopefully.

"I'm going back to New York." Before Wendy could respond, Chandler left the conference room and headed down the hallway to his office. He picked up the phone and dialed a number.

"Hello, you've reached the office of Elaine McKenna. Please leave a message."

The machine beeped, and Chandler began speaking. "Hi, Ms. McKenna, this is Chandler Bing down in Tulsa. I'm just calling to say that I'm going back to New York tonight. I quit. Merry Christmas." He hung up and took a deep breath. He was finally leaving his job that he had hated for so many years. He was going to see Monica.

Chandler grabbed his jacket and his briefcase and left his office, stopping briefly in the conference room to grab five of the discarded New York City Ballet donation envelopes the New York guys had tried to pass off as Christmas bonuses. He hadn't gotten Christmas presents for anyone yet, since he had thought he would have an extra week, and now that he was out of a job, he didn't think he should be buying expensive gifts.

As he left the conference room again, he found Wendy standing in the hallway near the stairs.

"Seriously, what are you doing?" she asked, confused.

"I'm going home," he replied simply. "I just quit."

Chandler moved passed her and made his way hurriedly down the stairs and out the door to the parking lot, where his company leased Ford Focus was parked. _I guess I'll just leave it at the airport. Not my problem_, Chandler thought as he got in the car.

He made a quick stop at the hotel to grab the rest of his things and check out of the room.

"Merry Christmas, Mr. Bing!" said a man at the reception desk.

Chandler nodded in reply as he left the building. _Last time leaving this place,_ he thought to himself, giving the hotel one last glance as he got in the car. _No complaints from me._

He made the now familiar drive from his hotel to the airport quickly. The always quiet airport was even less crowded than usual on this Christmas Eve night, as Chandler booked one last flight home.

As he waited for his plane to take off, Chandler tried to imagine what Monica and the rest of the gang were doing. Monica would have baked cookies, which Joey would have already eaten most of. They would be getting ready to exchanging gifts, which would leave wrapping paper all over the apartment for Monica to happily clean up later. Rachel would, of course, be returning and exchanging her pile of presents in a few days, much to the annoyance of everyone, especially Ross. Phoebe would bring out her guitar to play any songs she had written that had anything to do with Christmas, even if they were a bit depressing. It would be just like any other year. Chandler just hoped that Monica wasn't still upset about the Wendy thing, though he knew that when she found out what had happened she would be both excited about being right and furious at Wendy for trying to do anything with him.

As the plane rolled down the runway and made its way up into the air, Chandler settled back into his seat for the three-hour flight. _I hope Monica's okay with me quitting my job,_ he thought, beginning to worry that he had acted too rashly with his sudden decision to leave Tulsa._ I know she wanted me to come home, but is that worth me having no income? _Chandler shook his head, deciding not to worry about anything until he was back home with Monica. He closed his eyes, hoping to not wake up until he was back in New York.

Chandler jolted awake after what felt like a few minutes, but he soon realized it had actually been the full three hours of the flight, with their landing being what had woken him up. Out the window he could see only blackness, but a smile still came to his face anyway. He was home.

He grabbed a cab back into the city as snow began to fall lightly all around the taxi. He soon found himself back at their apartment building, the snow getting heavier as he paid the driver and stepped outside. Chandler looked around him, grinning at the snow, but even more so at the fact that he was home and that Monica was just a few floors away from him. Maybe she was even looking out the window, watching the snow fall too.

He quickly made his way into the building and up the steps to the apartment, opening the door without hesitation.

The rest of the gang was peering out the window at the snow.

"Hey!" he said, an enormous smile growing on his face as soon as soon as he saw everyone.

Monica gasped as Ross spoke, gesturing toward him. "Oh my God."

"Hey!" Joey said after Ross, grinning, as Rachel and Phoebe added their own gasps and awws.

Chandler had missed his friends, but at that moment, he only paid attention to Monica, who had a smile that matched his own as she stepped in front of the rest of the gang to get to him first.

"It's a Christmas miracle!" Joey exclaimed happily, right behind Monica.

"What are you doing here?" Monica said in a voice that Chandler noted was infinitely happier than when he had spoken to her on the phone several hours before.

"I wanted to be with you," Chandler said, his eyes not leaving Monica's as he took her hands in his. "I missed you so much."

"Hey, hey," Joey interrupted Chandler and Monica's moment together, "ah, who'd you miss the most?"

"Monica," Chandler answered, motioning to her with his head.

"Gotcha," said Joey, winking at Chandler and stepping back.

Chandler shrugged off his friend's comment. "I never want to leave you again," Chandler said, turning his attention fully back to his wife.

"But I thought if you left, you'd get fired," she said, the happiness falling from her face as her smile dimmed.

"Turns out," Chandler said as casually as possible, playing with Monica's hands, "they can't fire me… because I quit."

Chandler looked up to gauge the reactions of the rest of his friends.

"What?" said Monica, surprised, but not angry.

"What?" Ross said, too, seeming to be speaking for the rest of the gang. "You, you really quit your job?"

"Yeah!" Chandler extolled, trying to get Monica on board with him quitting. "It was a stupid job, and I could not stand leaving you." He stared down at Monica. "And why should I be the only one who doesn't get to do what he really wants to do?"

"Well, what do you really want to do?" Rachel asked.

Chandler suddenly realized that he didn't know. "I have not thought this through."

"Oh my God," Monica said, her hand on her chest. She was smiling.

"I know, I should have talked to you first about it," he said softly.

"No!" she replied, "I think that this is what you want to do. I think it's great!"

Chandler beamed at Monica. He had the greatest wife in the entire world. "Thanks."

After Phoebe demanded her Christmas present, Chandler passed around the envelopes he had taken from the Tulsa conference room before he left. His friends weren't too pleased with the donations to the ballet, but Monica kept smiling at him, so Chandler didn't care.

Later that night, after all their friends had left, Chandler sat in the kitchen as Monica began cleaning up.

"Oh, Mon," Chandler said suddenly, realizing that he hadn't told her about Wendy. "I have to tell you something."

"Yeah?" she said, looking up from across the table where she was tossing the envelopes from Chandler's "presents" into a trash bag.

"You were right about Wendy."

Monica's face fell as she dropped the trash bag. "WHAT?"

Chandler put his hands up to try to defend himself. "I mean she started flirting with me and trying to get me to cheat on you, but I said no because I love you, and you're _so_ much prettier than her, by the way. But then she asked why I was in Tulsa with her instead of back here with you if what we have is so great, and that's when I realized that I had to quit because nothing in the world is worth being apart from you." Chandler stood up and walked over to Monica, taking her hands in his as he had earlier.

Monica looked upset. "She tried to _seduce _you? _Stupid _Wendy from _stupid_ Tulsa tried to _seduce_ you?"

Chandler moved his hand up to stroke her cheek gently. "But I'm never going back to _stupid _Tulsa, so it doesn't matter, right?"

Monica nodded slowly and then seemed to realize something, a grin appearing on her face. "So I was right?"

Chandler laughed, moving his hands to play with her hair. "You were right."

Monica leaned in and kissed him. "I'm always right."

Chandler laughed again, happy to be back with his wife. "I know you are."

Monica picked up her trash bag again. "Oh, you should check the paper, see if there are any job openings you'd be interested in."

Chandler grabbed the newspaper from the kitchen table. "Good idea." He moved to sit on the sofa, grabbing a pencil to circle any listings that looked promising.

He saw Monica smiling at him as he sat down.

"What is it?" he asked her curiously.

Monica looked down at him. "I'm just so happy you're home."

Chandler grinned at her. "Me too.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks so so much for reading, and reviews are actually the best things ever!_


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